"Show and tell" or "the morning talk"

at school used to fill me with dread. I simply loathed it.

I have no idea what my classmates thought of having to stand there in front of their peers and say something about an object they had brought along to school. I suspect the majority of them hated it as much as I did.

It was embarrassing and it was boring. My classmates would stand there on one leg and then the other. They would twist and turn and wriggle all over. Some of them would whisper and others would almost shout out of sheer nervousness. Even the most apparently confident would hesitate. "Um" and "Er" were the most commonly used sounds. Words failed some altogether. 

I remember one boy bringing in a toy steam engine and just standing there unable to speak. It was clearly well made but also home made. Finally the teacher asked him, "Who made it?" 

"My granddad." The two words were an effort.

"Did you help?"

He nodded. 

I remember holding my breath and willing the teacher not to ask him any more questions. Of course she did. He couldn't answer them. He just stood there for a moment longer and then, mute, rushed back to his seat. Perhaps oddly for a group of children we did not tease him. Instead, at "home time", he was there surrounded by his friends with his mother in the background explaining how it worked. 

I have no idea what sort of marks he finally achieved for his "show and tell" morning talk. I can guess and I can guess the sort of comments written on his report card. It is unlikely they were an accurate representation of his ability.

On my way home yesterday I stopped to speak to two young boys of my acquaintance. They showed me something their grandfather had just made with them - a steam engine. They told me how it worked.

I had never met their grandfather - or so I thought. He came out of the house as I was talking to the boys. He nodded to me and the older boy introduced me politely as "This is Cat and Cat this is our granddad." We talked briefly about the steam engine. It was a wonderful piece of very precise engineering. I said so and mentioned my maternal grandfather's work. Their grandfather nodded.

"I had a grandfather like that." He didn't say anything else but I suddenly knew here was the same man who had found it impossible to say anything in front of his classmates. 

I did not remind him of the incident. There would have been no kindness in doing that. I didn't even tell him I had been in the same classroom.  It may have caused him to remember. I did think of his daughter once saying, "Dad's a man of few words."

Perhaps he is but the steam engine said a lot.